Saved
by racebag
Summary: She couldn't take it anymore. The horrors from her past kept haunting her. She decided to end it all. And she almost did. [Hawkeye/Clint B/OC] Rated M for suicidal thoughts, self harm and violent flashbacks. WARNING: May be a trigger.
1. Chapter 1

**This fanfiction is going to be dark, so you know. A lot of difficult thoughts and emotions. Self hatred and so on.**

**Set some time before Avengers and Thor.**

**WARNING: May be a trigger.**

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The wind ripped through my hair and tore at my clothes.

I was only a few steps from the edge now.

It was high up too. At least 150 meters.

I looked out over New York city. All those people bustling about, minding their own business. I could hear the traffic loud and clear. The noises carried by the wind.

Suddenly a painful wave of anxiety rushed over me and I wrapped my arms around my stomach gasping slightly. The pain ached in my chest and my gut, until it finally subsided. Somewhat. It never completely disappeared.

Tears were streaming down my face. The strong wind drying them almost as soon as they spilled from my eyes.

I blinked hard, scowling.

_I_ had decided to do this. _I_ had walked up here. So _I_ needed to finish what _I_ had started.

I moved a little bit forward and peaked over the edge of the building.

I caught my breath at the sight of the long drop down to the pavement and instinctively recoiled. Fear surging through my whole body.

I forced myself to calm down, taking deep breaths. I needed to remind myself why i was doing this, otherwise i wouldn't dare to go through with it.

I closed my eyes, letting the images flood my mind.

A dark room. A looming shadow. A broken bottle. A wicked laugh. The basement. The tears. A blinding pain. A scream. Blood. On the kitchen floor..NO!

Startled, I opened my eyes again, pushing the image from my mind. I did not need to go there. Going there was bad. Only bad.

Instead, I started repeating all the now familiar sentences quietly to myself.

"Can't take it anymore. Need to get out of here. Nobody will care anyways. Completely worthless. Waste of space. Stupid, stupid, stupid."

I inched my way towards the edge again, careful not to look down this time. When i finally stood at the very edge, I closed my eyes tightly. I knew I wasn't going to be able to do this if they weren't shut as firmly as possible.

I breathed in deeply, tightening my black jacket around me, and before I could let the breath out, I stepped off the building.

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**Okay, first chapter was a bit short, the next will be longer. Let me know what you think. :)**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2. Enjoy ;)**

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I fell.

The sound of the wind in my ears was almost deafening as I plummeted towards the ground.

I kept my eyes tightly shut. But a small worm of fear, sadness and panic was starting to form in my stomach.

It didn't matter. In a few seconds that would be gone. I would be gone.

Then something went wrong.

Something big and heavy crashed into me, and wrapped around me.

A strangled sound escaped from my throat in a startled attempt at screaming.

My direction changed. I was no longer falling downwards, I was falling...side wards.

It didn't make any sense, how could I be falling to the side? It was impossible!

My thoughts didn't get any further.

Suddenly my whole body hit something. Hard.

It exploded around me, and several places on my face and hands burst into pain.

A second passed.

Then I was rolling, tumbling on a flat surface. The thing that had crashed into me was still wrapped around me, and was tumbling with me.

I rolled to a stop. Everything was quiet.

The only things I could hear was my racing heartbeat and my rapid breaths.

I noticed that I was lying on something warm and firm. And it was moving!

I opened my eyes for the first time since I had jumped, and stared into the face of a man.

I instantly recoiled, scrambling to get off him, moving backwards.

In my panic, I failed to notice the desk behind me, and my head bumped painfully into it. But I barely registered it.

I kept staring at the man. He seemed unconscious, though I wasn't sure.

His eyes were closed, but his chest was moving as he breathed. So at least he wasn't dead.

I studied his face.

He had short, blondish hair and a youthful, open face that was littered with small cuts. He seemed to be in his late twenties, possibly mid-thirties.

I looked at the rest of him.

He wasn't particularly tall, but he was stocky built. He wore a sleeveless kind of jacket in deep purple and black, that showed his muscular arms. They too were covered with small, to larger, scrapes and cuts. His left forearm (from my point of view) had two pieces of some black material attached to the underside by four thinner straps wound around the arm. His right hand was clad in some strange sort of glove. It only covered the three middle fingers, and was fastened on the wrist like a bracelet.  
His pants and boots were pure black. The pants had strange buckles on the thighs, and the boots were high and military-looking.  
I started to notice more and more things around me, the more I looked.

To the right of the man, a black quiver with arrows lay on the floor, and to the left, a very high-tech looking black bow.

I looked around at the room I was in.

I was obviously in an office building. There were desks and office chairs all around. Most of the desks had computers on them as well, and the floor was covered in a blue, soft carpet. It was a Saturday afternoon, so there was nobody around. But how had I ended up there?

Suddenly I noticed the windows. One of them was smashed, and the floor in front of it was littered with broken glass.

Comprehension dawned on me. And my eyes snapped back to the unconscious man in front of me.

Somehow, this strange man, had managed to catch me mid-air, and crashed into the window of one of the neighboring buildings, saving me from certain death. By doing this, he had probably injured himself in more ways than being cut by the broken glass.

Why had he done that? Why would he risk his own life like that?

Suddenly he stirred, groaning.

I pushed myself further away from him, panicked.

My back pressed against the desk behind me, and I watched as he slowly sat up.

***Third person POV* **

He opened his eyes, squinting, staring at the white ceiling above him.

He frowned. Where was he?

Then he remembered. The girl.

He had seen her stepping off the building, and in that moment, he had made a split-second decision. He had known that this would be abandoning his current mission for S.H.I.E.L.D, but he had to save her.

He had fired an arrow with a wire attached to it at the building on the opposite side, and swung himself, praying that he had estimated the distance and speed correctly.

He had.

He had slammed into her, grabbing hold of her as hard as he could, and then they had crashed into one of the windows of the building he had fired at.

He sat up, slowly, feeling all the cuts from the broken glass on his face and arms.

He examined them quickly, but none of them seemed fatal, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

Then he looked around for the girl.

It didn't take long for him to find her, as she was sitting right in front of him.

He looked at her, concerned.

She was small, with long brown hair and grey eyes. Her face was thin, pale and covered with cuts, as well as her hands, but she didn't seem to notice.

She had a wild look in her eyes. She was frightened, and probably in shock too.  
She wore a black leather jacket over a black tank top, black jeans, and black sneakers.  
"She really seems to like black", he thought to himself.

She was curled up against one of the desks in the room. She seemed to be afraid of him. He didn't blame her.  
But he needed to check out her wounds, so he moved closer to her on his hands and knees.

She flinched, and pressed herself up against the desk even more.

He stopped.

He put up his hands, and talked to her in a quiet, soothing tone.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said. "But I need to examine those cuts. You could be seriously injured."

She stared at him, confusion written on her face.

Obviously she had no idea what he was talking about.

"You have cuts from the glass on your hands and face." He told her.

He watched her lift up her hands and look at them.

Her cuts seemed to be worse than his, since she had been the one to hit the window first. In fact, one of the shards was lodged right above her wrist, the wound bleeding profusely.

She saw it, and her complexion went from pale, to white.

She started swaying where she sat, and he instantly knew what was going to happen.

He rushed forward and caught her right before she hit her head on the desk chair.

He cradled her in his arms for a moment, and said: "You'll be okay." as he stroked her hair.

Then he picked her up and made his way out of the building.

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**So I hope you liked chapter two. It was a little difficult to write. Make me happy by leaving a review! Thanks! :D**


	3. Chapter 3

Everything was soft, warm and safe. It felt like floating on a cloud.  
My eyes were closed and I was completely relaxed.  
I let out a soft sigh of pure serenity and stretched comfortably on my peaceful cloud.

In that instant, the floating sensation disappeared.  
I became aware of the blanket covering my back, keeping me warm. I also registered the mattress on which I was sprawled on my stomach.

My eyes fluttered open, and I shot up, sitting on my knees in the blink of an eye. I looked around, frantic, disoriented and confused.  
I was sitting on a bed in what looked like a hotel bedroom. How did I get here? And where was "here"?

Slowly, the memories started to come back to me.  
I remembered stepping off a high building, and a cold hand clutched around my heart in fear at the thought.  
I remembered something slamming into me, and then pain, and tumbling. I remembered an unconscious man lying on one of the floors in an office building.  
I'd seen him wake up, notice me, and say something. Something about my hands.

Then I remembered the sight of a shard of glass sticking out of my left wrist.  
I hastily raised my arm to check the wound.  
The shard was gone.  
Instead, there was a tightly wound linen bandage where it had been.  
I looked myself over, and found that I had multiple cuts and scrapes on my hands, arms, legs, and probably my face too. They had also been cleaned and taken care of.

I turned around, facing the rest of the hotel room I was in. It was not very big, but it looked cozy enough.  
To my left was a big window overlooking a street and the opposite building.  
And to my right was a wardrobe and what I guessed to be the door to the hallway.  
In front of me was a small chair with some clothes hanging off the back of it and a chest of drawers.  
Slightly to the right of that was another door. This one was open, revealing a bathroom.

I got out of the bed, wearily, my wrist throbbing a little, and let my eyes wander over the small room. They stopped when they got to the chair again, focusing on the clothes.  
I suddenly realized that they were mine. They were tattered and a bit bloodstained, but still undoubtedly mine.  
It wasn't until then that I actually noticed what I was wearing.  
I was dressed in a couple of baggy shorts that both felt and looked like they were newly bought, and an oversized white T-shirt that smelled like some male deodorant.

I felt dizzy. The fact that I'd just woken up in some strange hotel room without a clue of how I'd gotten there was scary enough. But to discover that whoever had placed me here had also taken off my clothes, was terrifying. And who knows, they may have done more than just undress me...  
The thought made me even more nauseous, and I had to sit down on the bed before my legs gave out under me.  
I was sick to my stomach and felt like I was going to throw up, but I was determined to not let that happen. I hated throwing up, and hadn't done it in years. I wasn't about to break that streak now, no matter how horrifying the situation was.

As I sat on the bed contemplating whether I should throw myself out the window or not, the door suddenly opened.  
It startled me and I jumped up from the bed, moving backwards towards the window.

The man who had entered looked at me somewhat surprised, and I recognized him as the man who had saved me, except now he was wearing ordinary blue jeans, a black tee and a brown jacket. He was also carrying a couple of shopping bags which looked a little out of place.  
I kept my eyes on him, wary of his every movement.

"You're awake." He stated, placed the bags on the floor and closed the door behind him.

I didn't answer.  
He studied me, a concerned look on his face.

"How do you feel?" He asked carefully, noticing how jumpy and nervous I was.

I remained silent, staring at him.  
He, in his turn, kept his eyecontact with me, waiting for me to answer.  
After a long while, I finally spoke. And when I did, my voice sounded hoarse and scared.

"Who are you, and where am I?"

His face softened a little, and he gave me a half-smile.

"My name is John, John Miller. And this is my hotel room. You're safe here, you can trust me." He told me, still looking into my eyes.

I breathed for a moment, thinking that information over.

"If you want me to trust you, you will have to tell me your real name." I replied, my voice still a bit shaky.

He seemed surprised for a second. His face or posture didn't change, but I saw the emotion reflected in his eyes, if only for a short moment.  
He didn't answer immediately, pondering my statement.

"Clint Barton." He said finally. "But I meant what I said about you being safe here. And you can trust me."

Now it was my turn to ponder. I was still shaken up from everything that had happened, and the only thing I knew about this man was that his name was Clint Barton, and that he had saved me from jumping to my death. I didn't trust him. I had no reason to. After all, I still didn't know why he had taken off my clothes, or what he had done once they were off.

I breathed deeply, trying not to think about that too much.

"What am I wearing?" I said after a moment of silence. I could at least give him a chance to explain.

His eyes switched from mine, to the T-shirt, to the shorts, and then back to mine in half a second.

"I bought some shorts at a shop nearby and let you borrow one of my T-shirts." Clint answered evenly. "Your clothes were torn pretty bad by the glass, and besides, I needed to check if you were injured."

I watched him closely as he talked, and he seemed as though he was telling the truth. I couldn't be sure, but when he had been lying about his name I had seen that he had involuntarily fiddled with the hem of his jacket. He hadn't done that now.  
Granted, he was a skilled liar, and he had probably gone through some kind of training, but I had been trained too. I was trained to, among other things, detect when someone was lying.

"So what's your name?" He suddenly asked, bringing me back to reality.

I hesitated. I didn't know why, I had nothing to hide, and no one knew who I was anyways.

"Ariana Wilson." I said, and this time my voice sounded a bit more steady.

"Pleased to meet you Ariana." He said with a small smile.

I didn't return it.

He bent down, picked up the shopping bags, walked over and placed them on the bed.

"Since your clothes were pretty much ruined, I got you something else to wear." He told me, looking at the bags. "Why don't you see if any of it fits and then meet me in the lobby downstairs?"  
It was phrased as a suggestion, but I got the feeling that I didn't really have much of a choice in the matter.

"I'll give you some privacy." He said, then he turned around and walked out the door, shutting it behind him.

The clothes, as it turned out, fit perfectly. He'd even managed to get the stuff that I liked.  
The bags contained a pair of socks, 2 tank tops, 3 T-shirts, 2 pairs of jeans and a zip hoodie. All of it black.  
In the end, I decided on a pair of jeans with a kind of grey criss-cross pattern, a plain black tee, and the hoodie.  
My shoes hadn't been ruined, so I put them on and went out of the hotel room.  
He had said to meet in the hotel lobby, and sure enough, as soon as I came down the stairs, I spotted him as he waited for me by the elevators, looking at his phone.  
I approached him tentatively, still unsure of whether I could trust him or not. I wasn't as scared as I had been at first though. Partly because he didn't seem to mean me any harm, and partly because now we were among other people and it was more unlikely that he was going to do anything to hurt me.  
I stopped a few paces in front of him and he looked up at me.

"Are you hungry?" He said, and pocketed the phone.

This surprised me, but I could feel my stomach complaining at the mention of food, so I nodded.

"McDonald's sound good?"  
"Okay." I said, and followed him through the hotel doors out on the streets of New York.


End file.
